Spoilers! Rowling answers questions

JK Rowling has told what happens to the main characters --the full transcript of her recent session answering fan's questions is up on Mugglenet

I am pleased with Luna's future--she becomes a famous wizarding naturalist who eventually marries the grandson of Newt Scamander, author of 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.'"

I couldn't see her ending up with Dean, despite their brief hand holding.

But Harry as Head of a Ministry Department seems a bit silly. He has no administrative talents at all, and should be a field worker. Although he is good (as the leader of the DA), at gathering people together to work for a common goal, so maybe it will work...

Linking to "Mythic Fiction for Young Adult Readers"

Following a link over at Chicken Spaghetti today, I found myself at the blog for the Endicott Studio, looking around with great interest. As well as the blog, there is an online Journal of Mythic Arts, the summer edition of which is now online. From the blog: this issue is "focused this time on mythic fiction for Young Adult readers. What's special about this issue is that it contains thirteen short stories, rather than our usual two or three, along with our regular mix of nonfiction, art, and poetry." Read more about it here (the blog) or go straight to the journal where you can read new stories by Holly Black, Gwenda Bond, and many others.

Since everyone is saying that Harry Potter has made fantasy the hot book genre for the young etc etc, I find it a little dispiriting that the lovingly selected cluster of such books displayed in advance of HP 7 at my library didn't get checked out in meaningful numbers (2 books is not meaningful, especially since I took one of them). However, ever the optimist I have changed the sign from "While you're waiting for Harry, check these out!" to "Now that you've read Harry..."

In fairness to the patrons of my library--they had already checked out many of the books I had planned to put in the display. The Dark is Rising seems to be going out like hot cakes; likewise the Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimo. But why will no one check out The Game (Diana Wynne Jones) or The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner) or The Safe Keeper's Secret (Sharon Shinn)?

What character from The Thief are you?

I just found out that I'm the Queen of Eddis...here's the quiz. If you haven't read The Thief and it's two sequels, by Megan Whalen Turner, you should. Especially if you are looking for Post Harry reading. I lovingly put these books out in my library's "while you're waiting for Harry" display...no one has checked them out. So I will change the sign to "now that you've read Harry" and leave the books there until they are gone. Or until Management forces me to reshelve them.

July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature

The curtain's gone up on the July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature --The Play's the Thing hosted by Saints and Spinners. It is a stunning collection of the cream of kid lit blog posts from the past month--check it out!

New Ballet Shoes movie on its way

A new movie is being made of Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild, due to start production in August. They are apparently having trouble casting it --here's an article explaining the difficulty. Ballet Shoes is one of the books from my childhood I read ad nauseam-- it's the tale of three sisters at a stage school in pre-WWII London. Along with White Boots (aka Skating Shoes) and Curtain's Up (aka Theatre Shoes), it's my favorite Streatfeild, so I hope they are kind to it. The BBC did a version in 1975 (shown at left), but I've never seen it.

When I lived in England a while ago, I was staggered to realize how many books she had written that are not readily available over here. Here's a full list of her books.

Wiggle and Waggle--the Play's the Thing

Last week I reviewed Wiggle and Waggle by Caroline Arnold, illustrated by Mary Peterson (2007, Charlesbridge, 48 pp, ages 4-8). In a nutshell, this is a picture book/early reader that tells of the simple doings/diggings of two worms (the eponymous Wiggle and Waggle), in 5 well-illustrated chapters. Here's the full review.

I have now read this book 16 times to my 4 year old. We have also stagged a Wiggle and Waggle puppet show.

Wiggle and Waggle makes a darn good puppet show for the very young. This occurred to me the first time I read it; I then found out that Charlesbridge had the same idea here at their Wiggle and Waggle activities page.

For one thing, it is very easy and fun to make worm puppets out of construction paper glued to popsicle sticks. Wiggle and Waggle are more "earth toned" than most new construction paper, but we have so many old old old pieces around that have faded that we were able to find colors that worked. But for those who want the real Wiggle and Waggle, not home-made approximations, Charlesbridge has cut-outable pictures.

There are only two characters, which cuts down on the chaos factor considerably. Wiggle and Waggle sing, and, speaking from experience, the Wiggle and Waggle song is easily memorized (there's a tune provided online, but I find it easier just to fit the words to whatever tune comes into my head). The plots of the Wiggle and Waggle stories are very simple (and plot takes a backseat to performance anyway, in a show like this. We did a lot of singing the Wiggle and Waggle song, less re-enactment of the story lines). And finally, after hearing the book over 20 times in a week (16 + however many times my husband has read it), there is a good chance that both child and adult will have memorized the dialogue (or you can just sing).

I am tempted to make more worms (so easy to do)--Squiggle and Squaggle (not in the book) can come over to play. I am also tempted to add zing to our show by making alternate W. and W.'s --Full Tummied version, for after the picnic, and Muddy version.

Or perhaps we can just go visit the compost pile, and find some worms to train for the live action version, and I can write about it as a submission to the Learning in the Great Outdoors blog carnival.

I'm submitting this one to The Play's the Thing, the July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature, over at Saints and Spinners.

There's a Book Quiz going around, which I found at Becky's Book Reviews. I hate this cover. I don't mind being The Hobbit, but why do I have to be this hobbit?

You're The Hobbit!

by J.R.R. Tolkien

All you wanted was a nice cup of tea when some haggard crazy old man
came into your life and told you it was time to do something with yourself. Now you're
all conflicted about whether to stick with your stay-at-home lifestyle or follow this
crazy person into the wild. While you're very short and a little furry, you seem to be
surrounded by an even greater quantity of short folks lately. Try not to lose your ring,
but keep its value in perspective!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Or take the Country quiz. I am France. I don't know what to say about that. And no, the quiz didn't ask my opinion of George Bush.

Next I took the university quiz:

You're the University of California, Irvine!

Your surroundings have always been spoiled and privileged to
the point of being removed from reality. At the same time, you can be
surprisingly down-to-earth and aren't even above the consumption of insects.
Despite being quite young, you have established yourself as one of the better
researchers in your field. You love the strange phonetics of the word
"zot".


Take the University Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I don't actually think "zot" has strange phonetics.

Stranger in a Strange Land--American girls at English Schools

I stopped over at Shen's Blog this morning, and I predict that I might be visiting again many times in the next few weeks, to check in on their "Crossing Cultural Borders" series (logo on right). It looks great!

This week's topic is "Stranger in a Strange Land: Americans Traveling to Other Cultures:

Since it’s summer and the perfect time to travel, we’re kicking off our Crossing Cultural Borders series with stories about American children and teens physically crossing the borders into other countries and experiencing other cultures."

When I was a little girl, I found myself starting first grade at the Oporto British School. Standing outside the door of my new classroom, a strange adult pushed me in the direction of a larger child, saying, "You stand with her. She's American too." And bang, it hit me that I was "the other" and at an even more basic level that "others" existed (well, not quite in those words). I had never before thought of myself as "American" in opposition to anything else.

In English school stories, Americans at English schools have generally been caricatures. Zerelda Brass, for instance, shows up in Third Year at Mallory Towers (Enid Blyton, 1948, but still in print), wearing (brace yourself) Lipstick! She is flamboyant, annoys the English girls with her accent (which is totally unfair), and generally has trouble with the role of rule-abiding English school girl. For more on Zerelda, look here . Enid Blyton sure has no qualms about pigeonholing girls from different countries--Americans, although bumbtuous, are at least good-hearted, whereas the unfortunate French are doomed--no sense of honour. I started reading Enid Blyton while I was at the Oporto British School, and found Zerelda so fantastical as to be meaningless. But by that time I had picked up, without conscious effort, a more or less posh British accent myself, while still inwardly sneering at the pronunciations of certain words such as squirrel (which of course has only one syllable).

An outstanding book about an American girl at an English boarding school is Back Home, by Michelle Magorian (1984). Virgina was evacuated to America at the beginning of WW II; now the war is over, she returns to her family in England. 12 year old Rusty, as Virginia was called by her American family, isn't "English" anymore, and Magorian does a superb job showing all the jarring, dislocating little things that make two cultures different from each other, even when the language spoken looks the same on paper. For instance, the simple act of saying "hi," without waiting to be spoken too, raises the hackles of the English girls. Rusty's experience at boarding school is horrific. Used to the freedom of her life in America (which seems like a cliche, but reading American vs English girls stories indicates pretty clearly that there is a lot of truth in it), Rusty cannot cope with the regimented, rule-bound institution in which she is trapped.

More recently, Libby Koponen wrote Blow Out the Moon (2004), based on her own experiences of moving to England at a young age, and going off to boarding school at age 8. She too expresses very well how totally foreign a child can feel that first day of school. At the day school she went to initially, the fact of her American-ness never went away; hence her enrollment at what turned out to be an idyllic sounding boarding school. Libby Koponen has a great web site, with lots of pictures!

I've always felt that England should feel less foreign than it does--after all, we read a lot of the same children's books...But because of the shared culture and language, the little things that are different are more startling than the large differences encountered in places where differences are more expected.

If anyone has other examples of American girls at English schools, please share them!

For Poetry Friday- Talking like the Rain, and a long day without water

In preparation for Poetry Friday, I checked out an anthology of poems for children--Talking Like the Rain, a Read-to-me Book of Poems (selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, illustrated by Jane Dyer, 1992, Little Brown). My six year old is a big fan of my blog, and I thought he might enjoy helping me pick this week's poem. We browsed through the anthology, dipping into poems almost at random. This book offers a mix of older authors (Christina Rosetti, RL Stevenson), and many 20th century poets of whom I know little, and includes a number of anonymous playground type songs, which is always fun. The water color illustrations are enjoyable without being intrusive.

So there we were, browsing, when I was startled to come across this poem, by Joan Aiken, called "John's Song."

It's a long walk in the dark
on the blind side of the moon
and it's a long day without water
when the river's gone
and it's hard listening to no voice
when you're all alone

so take a hundred lighted candles with you
when you walk on the moon
and quickly quickly tie a knot in the river
before the water's gone
and listen for my voice, if for no other
when you're all alone

"That was great." said my son, very seriously. I like it too.

I was surprised at this poem's appearance in this anthology because I knew it before, from Aiken's short story "A Long Day Without Water." It is a very sad story, and not being one to linger over sad bits, I never fully appreciated this song as a "poem." Checking my copy of the story (which appears in A Harp of Fishbones and Other Stories, 1972), I see to my even greater surprise that the second verse isn't in the story. Where did the missing verse come from?

The Kennedys say the poem is from Not What You Expected, another short story collection (1974), where the same story appears. Perhaps Aiken added the second verse then. Taking the question up with google, I found that she wrote quite a bit of poetry, so possibly I will be posting more from her on future Fridays.

Talking Like the Rain got its name from a quote taken from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, and printed at the beginning of the book:

One evening out in the maize field, where we had been harvesting maize, breaking off the cobs and throwing them on to the ox-carts, to amuse myself, I spoke to the field labourers, who were mostly quite young, in Swahili verse. There was no sense in the verse, it was made for the sake of the rhyme...
It caught the interest of the boys, they formed a ring around me. They...waited eagerly for the rhyme, and laughed at it when it came. I tried to make them themselves find the rhyme, and finish the poem when I had begun it, but they could not, or would not, do that, and turned away their heads. As they had become used to the idea of poetry, they begged: "Speak again. Speak like rain." Why they should feel verse to be like rain I do not know. It must have been, however, an expression of applause, since in Africa rain is always longed for and welcome."

I am longing for rain right now myself.

The Poetry Friday Round Up is at Chicken Spaghetti today!

Ralph Masiello's Dragon Drawing Book

Sadly, all the pictures I drew myself that went with this post vanished into the inter-ether. As I threw away my drawings and deleted them from my computer, there isn't much I can do about it.



I believe firmly that a few gentle tips can make a huge difference to a beginning artist. For instance, when I was little, my mother drew an endless succession of paper doll princesses for me to color, all with their arms stuck out at 45 degree angles. Being a good, docile child, I thought this was how the human form should be drawn until I was 14/15, when finally someone asked, "why do all your people have their arms sticking out at 45 degree angles?" It was incredibly liberating to move arms around. Likewise, when I was nine I was given "How to draw horses." Almost immediately, my horse's rear legs went from this to this. Definite progress, although more is needed-- my horses to this day are all standing still and looking left.

On occasion I draw dragons for my boys to color (strangely they don't want princess paper dolls). I have lots of stuffed models to copy, but I feel tremendously inadequate when I attempt the writhing, horn-festooned dragons of high fantasy. So I approached Ralph Masiello's Dragon Drawing Book (2007, Charlesbridge) in a hopeful spirit. (Masiello is also the illustrator of Jerry Pallotta's alphabet books, which are being requested incessantly these days at my house. Despite this, until I read the fly leaf I didn't have a clue who Masiello was. Other households must pay more attention to the names of illustrators...He has also done bug, dinosaur, and ocean drawing books, which makes sense, as each of these topics has its alphabet book).

The Dragon Drawing Book is lovely to look at. Masiello includes colorful finished dragons of his own, and very nice they are. I also liked the Useful Map showing where all the dragons he draws can be found--these are not just your common garden European dragon, but rather Dragons of Many Lands. I for one am greatful for every opportunity to promote geography and multi-cultural appreciation.

Masiello's approach is to go line by line, until suddenly you've drawn the lines and have the dragon. This is in marked contrast to the "find the geometric shapes" approach I've seen in other drawing books, where you block the figure out and then add detail and erase. Presumably the user of this book could sketch the basic shape on their own, and then add the clear lines Masiello suggests. In my "after" picture, I didn't do this, but perhaps should have.

Even though my kids are too young to do the drawings as outlined, they liked leafing through the book, and perhaps it will inspire them. My six year old ranks himself 3rd in his class at Dragon Drawing, and, not that I'm competitive on my children's behalf or anything, tied for best would also be nice. Especially since only three of them draw dragons.

Here is my Before picture:
This is "Raineater." He looks like a stuffed animal because he is.

Here is my After picture, drawn quite quickly in pen with no erasing:

I ran into two specific problems. For each drawing, Masiello provides lines to copy. In the beginning, it is not at all clear what the line is supposed to be, and so what seems like a small difference between your version and his can end up being more problematic than it might seem. That's why my tail is so scrawny--I thought it was ok to end it early, not realizing it was supposed to continue. I should have studied the final product, sketched it a bit, gotten some idea of what I was trying to draw.

My other problem is that I am really bad at repeating abstract patterns, which is why the scaly part down the tummy gets pretty out of focus on mine, and which is also why I chose not to include scales. However, I think, if I practiced, I could draw pretty good copies of his dragons, and then I would have a repertoire of 11 cool dragons.

Would I, at that point, be a better "dragon draw-er?" I think yes--I already feel a bit more ready to tackle wing structure. A book like this is perhaps the drawing equivalent of learning to dance by standing on someone else's feet--by copying their steps/lines, you get a feel for how things should go.

Charlesbridge is holding a really cool dragon drawing competition in honor of this book --see here; sadly, I'm too old.

NB: I received my copy of this book from the publisher.

Wiggle and Waggle

Wiggle and Waggle by Caroline Arnold, illustrated by Mary Peterson (2007, Charlesbridge, 48 pp, ages 4-8)

Wiggle and Waggle tells of the simple doings/diggings of two worms (the eponymous Wiggle and Waggle), in 5 well-illustrated chapters. This book works very well both as a read-aloud and as an early reader. I tried it on my children (4 and 6) last night as both, with great success. Of course, its worth as an early reader was perhaps compromised by the fact that I had to read it out loud three times at the request of the 4 year old before the 6 year old got a chance to try.

The doings of the worms are simple--they work in the garden (dig dig dig), go on a picnic, go swimming, and dig some more. As an adult forced to re-read ad nausem, I would have liked a bit more--the worms are not as well characterized as Frog and Toad, for example, and their adventures not as compelling. But according to my children, this book was just as good if not better.

Caroline Arnold has written more than 130 children's books, mainly non-fiction, so it's not surprising that this book also includes an information page about worms at the end. I appreciated this, although I am not sure that my life is better for knowing that there are earthworms that grow to be 22 feet long. That's too long.

The illustrations are simple, with touches of whimsical detail -- after eating their picnic, for instance, the worms have round little tummies, which delighted my youngest. It is a tricky thing, I imagine, to illustrate an early reader--one doesn't want illustrations that distract too much from the text, but they still should be interesting. I think Peterson does a fine job striking that balance. The book itself is very handsome. Even thought the words themselves are simple, and the chapters short, the hardcover edition I have looks much more like a Real Book than most early readers, which is all to the good.

I am doing my best to ensure that my children like worms. We go to the compost pile to look for "wormies" -- "Oh wormy-squirmy! wormy-squirmy! how sweet!" says 4 year old; but sadly, my 6 year old has been affected by peer pressure, and has been known to say "gross." So I was glad to bring home this pro-worm book (joining the ranks of Diary of A Worm, and Richard Scarry's books about Lowly).*

"This book should be called Cute Wormies," said my 4 year old, a pretty good summation of this charming, but not particularly deep (dig related pun) book.

From Arnold's website, here's the story of how Wiggle and Waggle came to be written, here's a link to an activities page, and finally, here's a link to a Wiggle and Waggle YouTube video.

*Lowly Worm is still my favorite fictional worm, even though I didn't get the pun until I was about 25. Sigh.

NB: I was given my copy by the publisher.

Reading YA and (oh the shame of it) J books as an adult

I was recently interviewed by my town's newspaper for an article about the Friends of the Library. As I had expected, I was asked what I myself read, and even though I am Not Ashamed of reading below my age, it still made me squirm a bit to confess (as if it were a guilty secret) that I get my books out of the children's and ya sections. I am not, however, alone--witness this recent article in the Chicago Tribune. There's also an interesting discussion about this going on at a blog I just found -- Dear Author. (There are also a lot of Sharon Shinn posts, including a lengthy interview that I hope to go back and find the time to read. I am very fond of Sharon Shinn's trilogy that began with Safe Keeper's Secret--I bought them for the library and no one has read them! Wah!)

For fans of Rosemary Sutcliff & books about King Arthur

Rosemary Sutcliff is my favorite writer of historical fiction; her books about Roman Britain are unparalleled.* However, I never read Sword at Sunset, one of her few "adult" books, mainly because it wasn't in my part of the library with her other books. The other reason is that it is about King Arthur, and about the same time I was devouring Sutcliff, I was also devouring Mary Stewart's Arthur books (The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, the other two not yet having been published). Stewart's version of Arthur seemed so right to me that I wasn't able to stomach the thought of any other, and to this day I avoid Arthur books.

However, today I stumbled upon this interview with Sutcliff from 1986, and I may well go out looking for Sword at Sunset. The interview was one of a series by Raymond H. Thompson, gathered together as TALIESIN'S SUCCESSORS: INTERVIEWS WITH AUTHORS OF MODERN ARTHURIAN LITERATURE. Check out the table of contents: lots of good stuff besides Sutcliff.

*I've now given her a label of her very own...

JK Rowlings on BBC last friday --More Death!!!

From a friend in England (perhaps old news but new to me):

JKR was on a BBC chat show on Friday and she said that while finishing the book, she killed off two characters who hadn't originally been slated to die. But she made it clear that they weren't the ONLY two characters who die: 'It's a bloodbath.' she said firmly 'well, not a bloodbath, but more than two die.'

So at least three. But please, not Luna.

Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart

There are some books that I have been putting off reading out loud to my children, because I am scared they won't like them and will never try to read them again. It's a delicate balance, because of course one wants to read them good books; just not the really beloved books from one's own childhood. Not quite yet.

One such book that I'm not reading out loud is Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart, illustrated by Gino D'Achille (1974, reprinted in 2001). One snowy winter night in Bavaria, around 150 years ago, a young peasant boy named Ludo is left at home by his parents to look after the animals while they go down into the valley. He hears the stable door bang, and running to look, sees Renti, the old work horse, disappearing into the blizzard. Following after, Ludo finds himself falling through the snow into a cave that is the beginning of a magical journey through the signs of the zodiac.

The cave is the home of the Archer, Sagittarius. He tells Ludo that old Renti had deliberately left the stable, to seek the chariot of the sun and become a star horse. Before the sun passes through the 12 Houses of the Zodiac, Renti must catch up with it, or fail. Ludo, keeping faith with his old friend, sets off. Each House has its own guardian, not all of whom are friendly. Sneered at by Capricorn, helped by Aquarius, almost eaten by Pisces, Ludo and Renti press on, until at last they come to the house of the Scorpion. With the deadly tail of the Scorpion hanging over his head, and the Sun's chariot about to depart, Ludo must make a final choice for himself and his beloved horse.

A written description of the plot doesn't do justice the beauty of the book. This is the type of story that will make pictures in your mind that will last forever (as well as being illustrated with very engaging pictures of its own). It is also a book about growing up, and learning to trust yourself. At the book's beginning, Ludo is pretty sure he doesn't amount to much; by the end, he knows his own worth, and the value of having a dream.

A caveat: some people I know don't like this book because of its negative portrayal of their own sign of the zodiac. Gemini (twin bullying thugs), Cancer (murderous), and Pisces (also murderous) come off the worst, so be warned. But even though Capricorn is not entirely admirable, I still love this book!

A World of Wonders by J. Patrick Lewis

A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis,illustrated by Alison Jay (2002, 40 pages, ages 4-8)

"Travel by boat or by car or by plane
To visit East Africa, Singapore, Spain.
Go by yourself or invite a good friend,
But traveling by poem is what I recommend!"

And indeed these poems take the reader around the world, exploring far off places and the people that explored them, offering helpful mnemonics (I especially appreciated the one about latitude and longitude -- "lines of latitude have a flatitude" and geographical readers.

I really wanted to love this book. It is absolutely lovely to look at--Jay's illustrations, in antique mappy tones, with the crazing of old oil paintings, are things of beauty. The educational content is great. But sadly, the poems themselves didn't quite sing for me; the majority felt rather forced.

One of the more engaging poems was Knockabout and Knockaboom, which the author tells us is set in the Mohave Desert, Southwestern United States (and I did like this sort of informative detail very much). Here's the first verse:

"The wind that whistles desert songs
By spinning tops of sand
Leaves behind a silent sea
Of dune-upon-dune land."

For what it's worth, my six year old said he liked all the poems. And probably this book will appeal greatly to all kids who consider themselves "sciency."

The Poetry Friday round up is at the Farm School today!

Welcome to Zanzibar Road, by Niki Daly

Welcome to Zanzibar Road, by Niki Daly. Clarion Books, 2006.

"One hot day in Africa, Mama Jumbo was walking down Zanzibar Road. "What a nice place to live," she thought." So begins Niki Daly's utterly charming tale of an elephant who settles down on a bright and bustling African street, builds a house, and adopts a young chicken (which sounds strange, but is rather sweet). The five chapters take Mama Jumbo from her entry into town to a happy ending of family and community.

When Mama Jumbo starts to build her house, all the neighbors come to help. The house was soon built, and a number sign (Seven Up) was found for it. But Mama Jumbo was lonely. She visits all the neighbors, a colorful group of African animals, looking for a house mate, but to no avail. Then she sees little Chico, a chicken, who "looked and smelled as if he needed someone to look after him." Soon Chico is clean and snuggled and loved. Chapter Three--"Where's Little Chico?" is the most amusing. When Mama Jumbo wakes up, she can't find Chico! The observant child will find him immediately--on Mama's head! Mama visits all the neighbors, giving us a tour of town--the grocery store, the bookmobile, Baba Jive the crocodile's music club--but no Little Chico! "Just wait until I find him," says Mama. "I'll pull his tail for making me worry so." But when Juju the Monkey tells Mama Chico's up on her head, she is so happy that instead of pulling his tail, she hugs him tight (been there, done that). In Chapter Four, "A Shadow on the Wall" (which, if this were a Victorian girl's book, would suggest that Little Chico were about to get TB, but of course it's not), a new cactus casts a monstrous shadow. Little Chico is scared, but Mama puts her hat on it, so now the shadow looks like her, and all is well. And finally the book concludes with a birthday party for Chico, and all the friends from Zanzibar road come to the party.

This is a marvelous book. It is marvelous at a surface level--fun story, fun pictures. At a deeper level, it gives children a wonderful picture of what it means to be a happy family and part of a community, even if you aren't born part of one. And on a final level, I really liked this book for its portrayal of an African community, a portrayal at once realistic and idealized. Finally, on a completely practical level, this is a great "easy reader" -- perhaps a quarter step up from Frog and Toad.

Poetry Friday: Three Books of Space Poems for Children

I recently won a copy of Douglas Florian's new book Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings (thanks Anne at Book Buds!). Like all the Florian books I've read, the poems are fun, the colors bright, and the book is enjoyable.

Another book of space poems for the same age group is Blast Off: Poems About Space (I Can Read). Edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (1995), this is a collection of poems by various authors. The School Library Journal, in their review of this book at Amazon, is rather dismissive of the poems. But heck. Kids (I find, based on a sample size of 1) get such a charge out of POETRY, and being able to read it themselves. My sample also likes things that come in short bites, so poems work well. So what if, in a book like this, the rhymes are obvious. At least the rhymes here actually all work, and aren't forced annoyances, as they are in some more critically claimed children's poetry books. (Same goes for Florian's poems--they work well as early readers, with some help, and he knows how to rhyme).

Anyway, here's my favorite poem (which is vocabulary-wise perhaps the hardest in the book):

Blast Off! by Joanne Oppenheim

Wheelless
wingless
weightless
unknown roads in space await us.

All the poems in this book are available on line at this site

For older kids/grownups, a very funny book of space poems is The Space Child's Mother Goose, by Frederick Winson, illustrated by Marian Perry (1956, reprinted 2001). My mother handed it to me when I was 11 or so; I was much amused, and it educated me--this poem, for instance, added "postulate" to my vocabulary:

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

Which seems, according to google, to have stuck in the heads of many other folks as well! (My mother, incidentally, continues to be a proselytizer for this book. A few years ago she met husband and wife physicists Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge and ended up sending them a copy, which they greatly enjoyed).

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Shaken & Stirred today! Enjoy!

The Silver Donkey, by Sonya Hartnett

There are some books that I find good -- the books I read in one tremendous gallop, that leave me dazed and red eyed, and then come back to haunt me as I pull up crabgrass. The Silver Donkey, by Sonya Hartnett (US 2006) was one such book.

It tells the story of two French girls who find a blind English soldier in the woods above their farm. He is trying to go home again, to see his dying brother, and because, as is gradually revealed, the war (WWI) has become something he can no longer be a part of, and he has deserted. He draws the girls to him with his small silver donkey (a good luck charm given as a parting gift by his brother), and with the stories he tells, and they visit him daily, keeping him alive while his sight returns. The stories are not of his own experience fighting in the war, but are about donkeys--the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem, the donkey who asked the sky for rain in an Indian legend, a donkey who carried wounded soldiers down to the beach at Gallipoli, and the finding of the silver donkey itself. The girls, knowing they have no way to see the soldier safely across the English Channel, bring their older brother to meet him. He in turn brings a still older friend, who, although a victim of polio, can still sail a boat and become a hero of this small story.

I use the word small on purpose--it is not an epic tale of the horrors of violent war. The book focuses on a small place, a small event in the larger picture, on small, ordinary people. There is no padding in this story; every word and scene seems cleanly and purposefully chosen, which gives the story great intensity and immediacy. The stories told by the solider deliberately break this feeling. I'm not a great fan of interjected stories in general, because I resent having the narrative flow broken, and also because I feel challenged by them. The author must have put them in for Deep Reasons, I think, and will I be clever enough to figure out what they were?

But I liked these stories very much as separate entities--they would make lovely stand-alone read alouds, except for the fact that they made me cry. I am not sure I've figured out the Point of the stories, if indeed a single Point exists. It's tied in to the nature of donkeys, the silver donkey of the title, and the Soldier (donkey-like in what he bore during his time at the front, but ultimately not so when he deserts). At any event, it's great food for thought, but makes the book perhaps less likely to hold the interest of children who have other things to do with their lives than pull up crabgrass. I think this book also might work better for readers who already know about the horrors of WWI. From the beginning I knew what the soldier was escaping from, whereas the book only tells about it toward the end.

My only regret about this book is not a fault, exactly, but a personal preference. I really liked the younger sister, Coco--she reminded me very much of Hilary McKay's style of character. Here's an example:

"Coco, however, was enjoying being mortally sad. She wandered down the lane sobbing woefully. She didn't dab away the tears that cascaded down her cheeks. "Lieutenant, Lieutenant!" she wailed. "Why - why - why?"

She supposed that anyone who saw her, a lonesome child staggering, weeping along a lane, could not help but be touched by the poignancy."

I would have liked more Coco.

The Silver Donkey sounds like an animal story, and there's nothing on the cover boards (there was no dust jacket) to suggest what it's about. The picture on the back of a sort of fay looking guy holding a small donkey made it look like a fantasy. It's lack of dust jacket drew me toward it--it is a beautiful dark green, with silver embossing, making it look old and precious. It is a lovely book to hold and read- the words are clear and far apart on the page, with pencil illustrations by Don Powers.

The book, published in Australia, won that county's top prizes: the 2005 Courier Mail award for young readers and the 2005 CBC Book of the Year award for young readers. Despite this, I find it a little bizarre that it has been made into an apparently successful musical.

Here's a link to a nice interview with Sonya Harnett over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

More about children's books in Iran

Poking around further in the Internet, I found a really neat site that gives news about book publishing, selling, and literacy in Iran. Two things that caught my eye:

1. Publishers and book sellers in Iran don't have to pay tax this year.

2. The Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults is planning a Satire Contest: "The first satire festival organised by branches of Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (KANOON) will be held in Tehran province. Iranian children and young adults who have just learned to write satire will take part in the festival on May 25th, 2007. They will compete in the fields of poetry and story writing in the festival which will also be attended by renowned Iranian satirists. A total of 11 selected participants will be awarded prizes in the Closing Ceremony. Selected entries for the competition were chosen from among 45 works submitted by children and young adults. (May 2007, Leili Hayeri Yazdi, APPREB correspondent)."

What an appealing thought (seriously). Such a change from the cloying sweetness that one sees so often in children's books and writing here (with many exceptions, of course, for instance the Children's Books that Never Were Series at Saints and Spinners. I am just feeling cranky because my son has to read Rainbow Fish for second grade and do a Friendship Project based on it).

Iranian picture books at the International Children's Library

I found a new site this morning-- the International Children's Library, where I spent more time than I probably should have browsing through the pages of beautiful, strange, disturbing, and intriguing (in various degrees) of children's picture books published recently around the world. The mission of the ICL is to make books available in digital form in all the languages in which they were written, the idea being that children learn to read best in their mother tongue. The website seems to have last been updated in 2006, but it is still a treasure trove of multicultural reading potential. Or at least picture browsing, for foreign language impaired folks like myself.

A few days ago I posted about the US government's massive export of translated English language books into Arabic speaking countries, and so I looked to see what books Islamic countries are publishing themselves. Here are a few that caught my eye:

Abraham, by Mostafa Rahmandoust, illustrated by Hafez Miraftabi (1383).

I think this one looks especially gorgeous: Autumnals, by Mostafa Rahmandoust illustrated by Bahram Khaef (1380). It's a collection of poems. I wish I could read it.

The Adventure of Ahmad and the Clock by Feresteh Ta'erpoor, illustrated by Mehrnoush Ma'soumian (1365).

None of these show up on Amazon, so I'm assuming they haven't been published in English. A great pity, because what better way to appreciate/get to know/wonder at/be puzzled by other cultures than to read their own stories?

Coincidently, there's a discussion of multi-cultural children's books over at Chicken Spaghetti going on right now...

Poetry Friday-Tortoise Family Connections, Owen and Mzee

I was captivated by the story of the orphaned hippo Owen and his tortoise friend Mzee, as described in Owen & Mzee: The True Story Of A Remarkable Friendship (Isabella Hatkoff et al., 2006). In January, Scholastic published a sequel: Owen & Mzee: Language Of Friendship Isabella Hatkoff with Craig Hatkoff and Dr. Paula Kahumb, illustrated by Peter Greste, which I read for the first time a few hours ago. The pictures are even more charming, the story of the communication and affection between hippo and tortoise even more astounding.

The book avoids cloying sentimentality by putting the future of this unusual friendship into question. Owen is still a baby hippo, but as he grows, the risk that he will hurt Mzee unintentionally grows as well. Mzee's shell already has an old injury from being knocked over by a hippo, and the animals' caretakers know that the day may come when they have to put the safety of Mzee before his relationship with Owen. Then Cleo is introduced--she is a 13 year old female hippo, who may win Owen's friendship, even his heart. Will Owen be able to be a hippo, instead of a tortoise? And what will become of Mzee?

Not being one to hang needlessly on cliffs, I did a google search and found a blog written by Stephen Tuei, Owen and Mzee's keeper (that old link wasn't working any more; here's a new link). So now I know what happened, and it is a little sad.

The picture above, showing Owen, Mzee, and another tortoise friend Toto, is from Tuei's blog, where there are lots more great pictures.

On a related note, I also learned that Scholastic has donated 1000 Owen and Mzee books to Kenyan schools. Good for them! They also donate part of the profit from the books to help support the wildlife park.

And to tie it in to Poetry Friday, here's a quote from Tortoise Family Connections, by D.H. Lawrence; the whole poem can be found here.

Father and mother,

And three little brothers,

And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,

Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.

Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,

Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.

Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless

Little tortoise.

Row on then, small pebble,

Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,

Young gaiety.

Does he look for a companion?
No, no, don't think it.

He doesn't know he is alone;

Isolation is his birthright,

This atom.

Indeed, it's easy to comprehend a hippo loving a tortoise, but the idea of a tortoise "loving" a hippo is hard to fathom.

A large piece of yesterday's Hilary McKay post got lost...

Annoyingly, a piece of the post I wrote yesterday about Hilary Mckay got lost, which is why things were muddled toward the end. So here it is:

Warning: Don't buy the slim paperback Rose's Flying Feeling, published in 2005 for World Book Day. I did, in bulk so as to get it cheaply, thinking that I could easily dispose of the extra copies to friends and on ebay. I was crushed when I opened it and found it was simply the beginning of Caddy Ever After. And once I knew that, I couldn't in conscience sell it on Ebay without saying that, so the whole thing was a fiasco and if anyone wants a copy at cost ($1.00) or 17 of them for a book discussion group or something, let me know...

Hilary McKay- Forever Rose! plus book shopping

Forever Rose, the fifth and apparently last book in Hilary McKay's series about the Casson family, will be released in the UK on September 20, and in Canada November 1. But sadly, not until next spring here in the US. There's a great interview with McKay up at Bookshelves of Doom.

I especially liked the list of the books she'd enjoyed as a child, because it was almost exactly what I would pick myself. It reminds me of the bit in Henrietta's House, aka The Blue Hills, by Elizabeth Goudge (1942) where Henrietta is taken to a book store and told to pick the books that every girl should own their own copy of, money being no object. She finds herself the owner of the books in the end, but it is the picking out, not the having, that always appealed to me most. That's why I'm president of the FOL--it gives purpose and pleasure to second hand book shopping. I almost never find anything I want for myself anymore (there are few early to mid 20th-century English school stories available here in New England), so it is nice to have a reason to buy books.

Back to Hilary McKay--I have very much enjoyed buying McKay's books for my library. In fact, we were possibly the first library in the US to have Permanet Rose, because I went to England to buy it.

Crying over Picture Books

My son encountered Our Tree Named Steve (Alan Zweibel, illustrated by David Catrow, illustrator) at school, and was very pleased to find it our library yesterday. I'd never heard of it myself, and was a tad doubtful--shades, as it were, of The Giving Tree, I thought. But Steve is no codependent looser, and by the time he performs his great act of heroism (falling so as to avoid causing great damage) I was sniveling.

The book that really gets me, though, is Roxaboxen (Alice McLerran, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. In case you don't know this book, it tells of a group of children playing in a vacant piece of land on the edge of a desert town, making a town for themselves of rocks and scrap wood, boxes and broken glass. The book ends with the children, now grown old, still treasuring their memories of Roxaboxen. My children like this book immensely--they enjoy the story of the games the book's children played, but when we approach the end, and I start weeping, they become a bit impatient with me. In both these books, the sadness comes from loosing one's own childhood, and also the approaching loss to adulthood of one's own children, things beyond the comprehension of the average 5 year old.*

I can't remember a picture book that made me cry when I was a child. I remember lots that were emotionally powerful and heart wrenching and required hard leaning into the arms of the reading parent (Are You My Mother?) but I don't remember crying. I will have to ask my mother if she remembers an instances.

I asked my oldest boy today if he had ever cried over a book, and he said he never had. I hope that some day he will (because I think this is one of the things that should happen when you read great books) But there's lots of time.**

*There are also a few picture books in which people or animals die (The Clown of God, by Tomie dePaola, Goodbye, Mog, by Judith Kerr) which are good for a few sniffs from me, but which don't elicit the same response from my boys. My mind has now taken a rather twisted path -- what if, for instance, the Owl Mother in Owl Babies never did come home?

**The idea of purposefully picking books that will cause your child to cry is hideous. But the idea of picking a book or video that will cause oneself or adult loved ones to cry is not. And I suppose that there are parents of independent readers that hand their children Old Yeller or Of Mice and Men or some such, knowing what is going to happen. I will always remember the night my 12 year old sister read Of Mice and Men.

For Poetry Friday: Memorizing Poetry

It is a dream of mine that by the time my boys are grown (14 or so years, on average), they will have memorized considerable amounts of poetry. My inspiration for this comes from Jean Kerr, a humorous essayist/commentator on family life (five boys and one girl) from the late 50s-early 70s. If you haven't read her, do!

In one essay, "The Poet and the Peasants" (anthologized in Penny Candy), she writes of her own efforts regarding the memorization of poetry by the young. "We have made mistakes with our children," she writes, "which will undoubtedly become clearer as they get old enough to write their own books. But here I would like to be serious for a few minutes about the one thing we did that was right. We taught them not to be afraid of poetry." (p 120).

It took great effort on the part of Kerr and her husband. On paper it seemed simple enough--every week the boys (girl not having yet been born) would memorize a poem, and on Sunday evenings they would recite them. The first week was a disaster: three bad limericks and one "lengthy and truly dreadful verse about a cookie-jar elf" (p 123). The second Sunday, featuring poems chosen by the parents, was also unsuccessful-- "the fact that the poems were of better quality and somewhat longer made the recitations even more agonizing, if that were possible" (p 126).

And here is where my admiration for Kerr and her husband really kicks in. They decided they would take an active role in the process: "One week he'd work on two of them while I worked on the other two (the following week we alternated so that the hostility engendered would be evenly divided." The parent would first read the poem, and ensure that the child actually understood it, not just the "meaning" but the words themselves. Then work on reading out loud was undertaken: "Two of the boys were very quick to grasp inflections; the other two were so slow that rehearsing them was like the Chinese Water Torture and I found myself wondering if there was some way to withdraw from the whole plan- with honor. What kept me resolute was the conviction I read in all those clear blue eyes that I would soon come to my senses, that this madness too would pass" (p 127).

But it worked. The boys memorized yards and yards of poetry, developing their own individual tastes--John, for instance, was "awfully good with people who died or were about to die, like dogs" (p 131). And in the end, it payed off, and the boys were ready with apt quotations for any occasion. A broken window one evening elicited this quote from Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold: "Come to the window, sweet is the night air."

So far, with no effort on the part of my husband or myself, my boys have memorized the last verse of Cargoes, by John Masefield, and also Douglas Florian's eminently memorable poem about the Monarch Butterfly (Omnibeasts, 2004), memorable chiefly for its last verse: "He is a Monarch, he is a Duke. Swallows that swallow him frequently puke.")

I wish that I had memorized more poetry myself; the number of poems that I have in their entirety can be numbered on one hand, and includes the Monarch Butterfly (although I also know scads of Mother Goose). Only twice in my life was I asked to memorize a poem for school--the first was a rather unexceptional poem about a hippo in second grade, the second Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (perhaps the most memorized poem in the USA?) in seventh grade. I tried in high school to memorize poems on my own, but they didn't stick. I think it helps to start young. With Kerr as my guide, I hope to give my children the gift of a brain full of amusing, beautiful, thought-provoking, and quotable words. And I'm sure I'll get started just as soon as I find the time.

If anyone is curious, here is the poem about the hippo (author and punctuation unknown):

He has opened all his parcels,
But the largest and the last.
His hopes are at their highest,
And his heart is beating fast.
Oh happy Hippopotamus!
What lovely gift is here?
He cuts the string, the world stands still,
A pair of boots appear.

Oh little Hippopotamus,
The sorrows of the small.
He dropped two tears to mingle
With the flowing Senegal.
And the "thank you" that he uttered
Was the saddest ever heard,
In the Senegambian jungle,
From the mouths of beast or bird.

Not exactly a poem that will give me comfort or diversion in my decrepit old age...

If anyone is interested in reading Jean Kerr, here's a quick bibliography of her collected essays:

Please Don't Eat the Daisies 1957
The Snake has all the Lines 1960
How I got to be Perfect 1969
Penny Candy 1970

The Poetry Friday roundup is at The Simple and the Ordinary today.

Book Imperialism or a genuinely Good Thing?

I just came across an article in Voice of American online (5/24/07) entitled "New Project Brings America's Favorite Children's Books to Young Arab Readers"

This article reports that Scholastic has developed a project called "My Arabic Library," wherein 7 million copies of translated and cultural modified books were sent to North Africa and the Middle East. This project got going in 2005, and has apparently been very well recieved.

Quoting from the VOA article: "Scholastic's Carol Sakoian says My Arabic library encourages the love of learning. Arab educators were involved in choosing the titles and making changes to some of the books to adapt to cultural differences. "They had to be approved book by book, page by page, illustration by illustration by four Middle Eastern Ministries of Education," Sakoian says. "Arab educators were a little careful, they were worried that this was somehow propaganda from America. It was not."

It was, however, funded by the State Department, who perhaps were thinking outside the book, as it were. I am all in favour of getting books out to everyone in the world who wants them, and I wish I could just have happy thoughts about my government doing a Nice Thing. But why aren't we sending books to Sub-Saharan Africa? or to inner city schools here whose library budgets are being slashed due to the government's budget priorities?

I also find it troubling that the books were modified so as to become "more acceptable." The idea of a panel of individuals having the power to pass judgement on "acceptability" is very disquieting. The modifications mainly seem to have been tampering with the illustrations; ie, adding long sleeves to girls' dresses (although it is not clear to what extent the text of the various books may have been altered). But the fact of the matter is, American girls wear short sleeves, and to pretend otherwise distorts reality.

Here's the Arabic Heidi (who actually may well have worn long sleeved dresses while frisking about in the Alps):



Here's a link to the books chosen for translation, an interesting list, and not exactly what I would call "America's favorite children's books."

Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates

While over in England last week, we were given many English picture books and young readers, the majority of which I've never seen over here. One of our favorites was Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates, by Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower (an American edition was published in September 2006).

Every night Mungo's mum is forced to read him the same pirate book over and over again. Every night he thrills as Admiral Mainbrace and "plucky cabin girl Nora" are rescued from the clutches of Barnacle Bill and his gang of pirates by the swashbuckling Captain Fleet. But one night, after Mungo's mum has read him the book six times (instead of the more usual four), she refuses to read again, leaving Mungo and the book alone.

Captain Fleet has had enough too. Looking for peace, he climbs out of his own book (much to Mungo's astonishment), and climbs into a slim volume entitled "At the Seaside." But now there is no-one to save the admiral and the plucky cabin girl! No-one but Mungo. And so Mungo enters the book and rousts the pirates, but unlike Captain Fleet, he does not end up marrying Nora.

The engaging illustrations have lots of humorous details, and the text is enough of a spoof of the pirate genre to amuse the adult reader (selfishly, I appreciate this in a book), while captivating the child. My boys were captivated.

Despite the "message," that you don't have to be a strong white male to be a hero (although Mungo is a sturdy white boy), and the inclusion of plucky cabin girl Nora (whose pluck is more on paper than in her actions), this book doesn't challenge any stereotypes. It is entertainment at a fun, flippant level, and for those looking for such, it is great.

In view of the most recent salvo across the bows of the kid lit bloggers (discussed at A Chair, a Fireplace and a Teacozy here) I write the following postscript:

ps. As a blogger of no qualifications, I of course do not expect anyone to take one word of this (hmm, can't be a review, because that would suggest I called myself a reviewer, which actually I don't much, so that's ok) emotion ladden summary (?) with any more seriousness than it deserves.

The new Harry Potter

Yahoo's featured news article proclaims the discovery of the New Harry Potter, a boy archaeologist who explores a hidden world deep beneath London. Roderick Gordon and Brian William originally self-published their book, Tunnels. Now they have over 500,000 pounds in advances. And I've heard that self-publishing is futile...

As an archaeologist myself, I generally don't want to read archaeology/treasure hunting fiction. So I am less than excited. The only book that I really like in which archaeology plays a big part is Nancy Bond's Country of Broken Stone. Not quite up there with her absolutly brilliant A String in the Harp, but very good. However, it is more a family dynamics story (English girl adapting to life with an American archaeologist step-mother and her three children while on a dig in Northumbria), than an archaeology adventure story.

48 Hour Reading Challenge Final Thoughts

Well, congratulations to the winners -- Midwestern Loadstar, who read 20 books, and Finding Wonderland/Readers' Rants, who spent a mind-numbing 32 hours reading and blogging. I had thought I could read 20 or more books myself, but what with one thing and another it didn't happen. And I was getting a bit tired of reading...Next year I am going to make sure I have a wider variety of tasty snacks on hand, although there's nothing really I can do about having the children on hand.

Thanks again to Mother Reader for organizing it all!

48 Hour Book Challenge Wrap-up

Well, I finished my 48 hours. Parts were great, and parts less so. I feel somewhat dazed, more so than usual.

Time spent reading: hard to know, exactly, because of all the interruptions. I'd say around 22 hours. Time spent blogging--only 15 minutes.

When I checked in Saturday, I had read 4 and a half books. In total I read 10 and 1/4, for 2603 pages (although, as Barbie once famously said, "Math is hard").

My other 6 and 1/4 books were as follows.

Saturday

Nancy Calles the Tune, by Dorita Fairly Bruce (1944). In this conclusion to an English boarding school series, Nancy, now having finished school, is seeking useful War Work (WW II). She finds it as an organist and choir-master at a struggling Scottish church. There issome adventure, and some not too satisfying romance. It was a good but not great read.

Then I started Fly-by-night, by Francis Harding, a book I've been meaning to read for a while. I found it very very hard going. After 158 pages I decided to bale out--I didn't give a damn what happened toMosca, the heroine, and there was no scrap of numinous-ness to the plot.

I also began reading out loud The Island of Adventure, by Enid Blyton (1944, 192 pages) to the boys.

I was very disappointed with my Saturday progress. I would have read more had not circumstances conspired against me--for instance, while I was in the library updating a patron came in with c 200 books to donate to the book-sale, and wanted his boxes back. That meant I actually had to sort and put away the darn things, taking an hour of time that had been earmarked for reading. Strangely, the boys also wanted things like food and drink, not that I begrudge them but still. I also was getting tired of reading.

Sunday

Sunday morning I was much luckier. I read:

Mister Monday, by Garth Nix (361 pages). Isn't it remarkable how much faster one reads when it is a good book? This one only took about 2 hours, compared to the 2 hours just for the first bit of Fly by Night. I will definitely be looking for the rest of this series. It reminded me somewhat of Diana Wynne Jones, a favorite author.

The next book was even better: The Player's Boy, by Antonia Forest (1970). The best Shakespeare story I have ever read. Great characterization, fun plot, good history. Very highly recommended, much good that will do American readers unless they are willing to spend a fair chunk of money getting the reprint (from Girls Gone by Press) from England, possibly via Ebay.

Then I moved on to Lady of Quality, by Georgette Heyer (1972, 255 pages). I tried very hard to get a variety of books going, so as to stay fresh. This was a good choice. Light and entertaining Regency Romance. I may well read more GH, especially as airplane books.

I next read Alison Uttley, The Country Child (1931, 237 pages). A pleasant lightly fictionalized memoir--sort of a nature diary and anthropology of pre WWII rural England combined.

Finally, I raced to the end of Sea of Adventure. Enid Blyton has her points--she is of the "kids like to read her books" ilk. I was one of those kids, although I had never read this one. But great fiction it was not. When reading it out loud, I had to edit out a racist thread, so this one is not going on my boys' bookshelf.

Just to clarify from yesterday:
Abbey book: 315 pp
Emma-Jean 199 pp
Mayne: 208 pp
Cedar: 220pp

I can't revise my previous post from home, nor can I comment on posts, let alone create a post on my home computer--there is nothing to press that says save, or publish. Control S doesn't work either. So I am sending this as an email to my sister...

Finally, thank you Mother Reader! It was fun, I read some great books, and now having pigged out on reading I will be able to spend more time in the coming week ensuring that the Needs of my Dear Family , dear house, and dear garden are met. I'm not tempted to read fiction at work, unless blogs count, so the amount of time I devote to dear work will be unchanged.

27 ish hours left to go

Update for the 48 Hour Reading Challenge hosted by Mother Reader:

I have read 4 and 1/2 books so far:

The Abbey Girls on Trial, by Elsie Oxenham. Not my favorite of her Abbey series. To much introspective trauma, done heavy handedly. 314p

Emma-Jean Lazarus fell out of a tree. This was a peach of a book. (gah. I don't have it with me here at the library. I'm pretty sure it's 199p.)

Follow the Footsteps, by William Mayne. A slightly pedestrian treasure hunt story, a genre I don't like, but the book is not without charm. Again, pagination doubts. 207? or perhaps I am confusing this one and Emma-Jean.

The slightly true story of Cedar B. Hartley by Martine Murray. (Australian book, 2004). I really liked this one! I look books about people learning to do things (in this case, acrobatics). But the title is pathetic. 240 pages.

I will try to get more posted, but am not sure I will be able to until Monday. It depends on whether I can persuade someone to copy an email and put it on here...why does our Mac hate blogger so?

It is very nice that a. it is raining b. I cleaned the house yesterday.

This means I feel less guilt about reading.

48 Hour Reading Challenge, here I go...

I am about to turn my computer off and catch a bus home. My time will start the moment I sit down on the bus, so approximately 4:51...

The action can be followed at Mother Reader, where all of the participants are side-bared (I hate verbed nouns, so I shall correct myself: listed in a side bar. Sorry).

Poetry Friday: A June Fish Poem

I had a carefully prepared little entry for today's poetry Friday, but it got eaten by the computer. So I fall back on a poem that amuses me, and which is Month-Appropriate.

A fish poem for June, by Rupert Brooke (The South Seas, 1913)

Heaven

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream or Pond,
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud!-Death eddies near-
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent and kind,
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
but more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.

The poetry Friday roundup is at Hip Writer Mama today.

Fidra Books seeks book

Yet another contest: Fidra Books, a small publisher in Scotland, invites entries for a New Book for them to publish! The details are here. I've mentioned Fidra before, as the re-publisher of Mabel Esther Allan books; I've read several other books they've reissued with great enjoyment. I've also added the Fidra blog to my blog roll -- it's well worth reading!

48 hour reading challenge coming up

In less than 48 hours, I will have plunged into the 2nd Annual 48 Hour Reading Challenge brought to us by Mother Reader. I have a stack of 11 books ready, I am planning on going to the library tonight to get 10 more, and I am considering using this opportunity to start a Harry Potter re-read (but in the same vein as considering whether it's time for a trip to the dentist--the one's I like I've read so often I know them, the others I don't like).

The only thing that's worrying me is access to a computer on Sunday--if I drive to library that's open on Sunday or to work, that will be 30 minutes less reading time. I am going to try to get the house clean and the entire garden weeded watered planted and the winter's wood supply chopped tonight so that I will not feel pressured to do these things instead of reading. Annoyingly, I have to give a talk tomorrow morning on underwater archaeology, but I will bring a book in case it starts late.

Win Comets, Stars, the Moon and Mars!

Here's another challenge. Anne at Book Buds has a contest going on: win a copy of Douglas Florian's Comets, Stars, the Moon and Mars by coming up with a punning definition of a space term. One of her examples -- Plutonic Relationship: A dwarf romance.

So here's my entry.

Red Giant: A huge statue of Lenin, or the man himself.I never thought I would be posting a picture of a Lenin statue on line. It just goes to show.

The contest runs till June 15, but feel free not to enter, because this is a book I would really really love to win!

8 Things meme = 8 books brought home from England

I was tagged with the "8 things about yourself" meme by Susan over at Chicken Spaghetti. Thinking that books are more interesting than many other things, here are 8 of the many books that came home with me from my recent trip book shopping across the pond:


1. Alison Uttley's memoir-ish account of growing up in the English countryside, A Country Child (1931)


2. The Player's Boy, by Antonia Forest. Shakespeare fiction, by one of the best 20th-century English writers for children. Her books were incredibly hard to find, even in England, but have recently been reprinted by Girls Gone By Publishers. However, most of the republished titles are now sold out, so she is still hard to find. The only one of her books that made it over to the US is The Thursday Kidnapping. It's not representative, not her best, and has mostly been ditched by US libraries so even that is not very findable.


3. Chiltern Adventure, by Mabel Esther Allan. This is the second of MEA's books to be reprinted by Fidra Books.


4. The Incline, by William Mayne. I like some of Mayne's books very much (Earthfasts, and especially his Cathedral book series--Swarm in May etc.), and some of his books not much at all. But this was a cheap hardback, not a library discard like all the hc Mayne one sees over here, so what the heck.


5. Tell Me No Lies, by Malorie Blackman. I am saving most of these books for Mother Reader's 48 Hour Reading Challenge, but a girl has to read something in the meantime. It passed the time, but I found it unconvincing.


6. Upper Fourth at Mallory Towers, by Enid Blyton. A boarding school book, rather fluffy, but it made me happy to buy it. I discovered Mallory Towers when I was seven, and now have a complete collection again.


7. Heather, Oak, and Olive -- three stories by Rosemary Sutcliff that I have never read before. Happy! We wanted to go to Hadrian's Wall this trip, but never made it that far north. We did, however, go and visit the Roman fort at Hard Knott, which was as evocative as all get out:


8. Finally, a real treat for myself-- The Abbey Girls Win Through by Elsie Oxenham. This is one of a long series involving girls, school, folk dancing, improbable romance, and a ruined abbey.


There's no way I can think of 8 people who haven't done this meme yet, so I shall let it die a peaceful death...

Back from the Lake District: Swallows & Amazons Forever!

At the end of my last post before going over to England's Lake District, I posted a Poetry Friday challenge--why does the poem Casabianca make me think of the Lake District? The Answer: because it is featured in Swallowdale, by Arthur Ransom.

Swallowdale is the second of books Ransom wrote about the wonderful holidays of a group of English children in the Lake District; the first is Swallows and Amazons. They had the freedom of a lake and its surrounding mountains where they were able to live imagined adventures (as it were), sailing and climbing and prospecting for gold and, in my favorite book, Winter Holiday, exploring the frozen north. This is the best series of books about children doing things outdoors that was ever written; it is imaginative and fun without being fantastic. One can imagine, that given a similar lake and mountains, one could do the same things. Here's the link to the original 1930 review of Swallows and Amazons (which is also interesting in a How They Wrote Reviews Back Then way) and here is the original cover:
If you haven't read these books, do! But please put Peter Duck and Missee Lee last on the list--these are the worst in the series.